It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

There is no method by which men can be both free and equal.

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honor or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

The U.S. presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones.